paint me a world where we'll live happily ever after
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: Molly had known that Harry Potter was her daughter's soulmate the day she woke up to find Ginny's face covered in blood and no wound it could have come from - the Prophet, of course, hadn't wasted much time in telling the world all about Harry Potter's lightning scar.


This was written for Hogwarts' Romance Awareness Challenge, Day Thirty-One: Free for all; you get your soulmate's wounds. This is actually a plot bunny I've been carrying around for a while now, I'm glad I got the chance to finally write it.

 _Word count:_ 1641

 **paint me a world where we'll live happily ever after**

It is unfair to her children for her to have a favorite, Molly knows that. And for a long time, she managed to do just that - after all, each of her children had some particular trait that she enjoyed most (even if the twins' mischievous streak was as annoying as it was amusing).

But Ginny… It's different with Ginny. Molly knows in her heart that Ginny will be her last child the moment they put her in her arms - not because the birth was difficult or anything like that, but because she can somehow feel that this is true. Beside that, Ginny is her only daughter out of seven children - the daughter Molly had given up on hoping for, and just that makes her especially precious in her heart, perhaps unfairly so.

It is lucky, then, that all of her brothers adore her so. Sometimes, when Molly lets herself think about the future that way, she shares a fond look with Arthur and they come to pity whoever Ginny soulmate is, for he (or she) will have to deal with the madness that is their family.

But, as Arthur always says, as long as they treat Ginny right, there won't be any problem. Besides, they have years ahead of them before they have to start to worry about that kind of thing. Best let it be for now, and keep it to the funny stories they tell themselves to pass the time, like when they wonder just who Charlie is bound to that he gets so many bruises not his own or how the twins' soulmate must react to the odd wounds their soulmate get.

Ginny, they figure, adventurous though she already is, will the least of their problem soulmate-wise.

Oh, if only that had been true.

 **.x.**

Legend is, once upon a time, you were one with your soulmate. And then something had happened, something terrible and unspeakable, that had caused these beings' souls to be split in halves. It was a punishment, some said, and the fact that you shared your soulmate's wounds (though thankfully not their pain) seemed to support this theory at least somewhat.

Most people only ever get small bruises or cuts, the signs of a life well lived. It's a game, almost, when you're a kid, to poke at your bruises to figure out which belong to you and which belong to your soulmate - which hurt and which don't.

It usually doesn't help you find them. Instead, it just reminds you that there's someone out there you can be happiest with.

And of course, Ginny - Ginny, who was special from the moment she was born - is different with this too. It will take them a while to figure it all out, but it starts when she's about six months old and still sleeping in her parents' room.

It starts when, on the morning of the first of November 1981, Molly wakes up to find her daughter's head sleeping peacefully, her head covered in blood. Her heart stops for a moment as she fears the worst, but when she cleans the blood away, it reveals unmarked skin and no wound to be seen. The blood, now parted from Ginny's skin, vanishes as though it was never there.

A soulmate wound, Molly realizes, heady with relief before she realizes what this means - that her baby girl's soulmate was hurt last night, and hurt badly.

She tells Arthur immediately, but no one else, and together they agree to keep an eye out for Ginny, to make sure nothing else happens.

Nothing does, but when a week later the front page of the Daily Prophet is painted with a crude drawing of a baby with a lightning scar on his head - Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived-To-Save-Us-All, the headline proclaims - Molly thinks she knows who her daughter's soulmate is.

For several horribly selfish moments, she hopes she's wrong. Harry Potter is a hero, branded by fate, and life rarely ends well for heroes - just look at what happened to her brothers. Ginny deserves a long and happy life, not the dangers being Harry Potter soulmate's would undoubtedly bring her.

And then she chastises herself for those very thoughts, and swears to banish them from her mind. She convinces herself that Ginny's soulmate, Harry Potter or not, is no different to any of her other children's soulmates.

And for a few years, it even works.

 **.x.**

Growing up, Ginny only spots a few bruises that aren't her own. Most of the time, she doesn't even notice them - she gets plenty of her own, and though she usually spares a few seconds to send a 'sorry' to her soulmate for the array of bruises they get from her, she never fails to run back out and add more. After all, at the end of the day her mother always heals them, tutting over Ginny's scraped up knees and elbows and telling her to be more careful next time.

But then, by the time she's almost six, it becomes easier to distinguish which bruises are hers and which aren't. The former don't change, but the latter do - they appear on her shoulder blades and on her forearms, purple and angry and shaped like fingers, and they make Ginny's stomach turn.

She's had bruises shaped like this once, when one of her brothers got mad at her for stealing his toy. It happened only that one time, and so long ago that Ginny can't really remember which of her brother did it, but she remembers crying to her mother, and the yelling that followed.

This bruise doesn't hurt, but it makes her feel sick somehow, and she can't stop reaching for it, as if hoping that the next time she tries it'll be gone entirely. It takes days to vanish entirely, fading into ugly yellows and greens, and it's only when it's gone that Ginny realizes what unsettled her so much about it: the fingers had been too big. There was no way a child could have done anything like that.

It gets only worse from that moment on, and Ginny doesn't really know what to do or say. Bruises that bad happen so very rarely that it's easy to convince herself that it's just a fluke, that it won't happen again, and so she lets months pass without really saying anything.

And then, it's not really up to her anymore.

It happens one morning, when they're all gathered at the table. One moment Ginny's happily reaching for the sausages - and by happily she means that she's fighting her brother for them - and the next her hand… fizzles. There's really no other word for it. The flesh reddens and bloats, white at the edges and skin peeling away on her fingers, blood welling up slowly to the surface.

It's the most painful-looking burn Ginny has ever seen, and even though she doesn't really feel it (it's not hers, it's not even really _there_ ) she still screams at the sight.

Everything happens so fast after that: her brothers gaping and speaking loudly over one another to the point where Ginny can't understand anything they're saying, her mother crying as she takes Ginny away while Arthur tries to give answers he doesn't have to the rest of his children.

Molly puts on a weird orange paste on Ginny's hand. It feels cold, freezing even, but after a few seconds her skin's absorbed it all and the ugly burn is gone. Ginny rinses her hand under the water, washing away the sticky residue.

"Thank you, mum," Ginny mutters, still shaken, as her mother draws her into a hug. She doesn't really know what she's thankful for - her hand hadn't hurt, after all, and the wound would have vanished on its own soon enough.

That's how it is: bruises last the longest, fading almost as slowly as if they were your own, but wounds never stay for more than a couple of hours. "They appear during the initial shock," Arthur had once explained, "and vanish once that feeling is gone." Ginny hadn't understood then, and while she thinks she still doesn't, she's also rather sure she's closer to it than she's ever been before.

"I'm sorry," Molly whispers, running a hand down Ginny's hair, "I'm sorry. Everything will be alright - you'll be just fine, you'll see."

Ginny draws back a little, staring at her mother's face. She doesn't think she's ever seen her look so lost.

"But what about my soulmate?" Ginny asks plaintively. "Will they be alright too?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't know."

"Can we make them alright too? Like when I have a nightmare and you and dad come and chase the monsters away?"

Arthur, who had finally followed them, rests a heavy hand on Ginny's shoulder, bending down to kiss her forehead. "We can certainly try," he says.

Keeping one hand clenched on her mother's robes, Ginny reaches with the other to wipe away her tears. "We can?" she asks, hating how weak her voice sounds.

"We will," Arthur nods, exchanging a meaningful nod with his wife, who tightens her hold on Ginny's shoulders and nods as well.

Ginny smiles, a small and trembling thing despite how hard she tries to hide her feelings. She takes a deep breath, and tells her parents everything.

Six months later, her father shows up for dinner with a boy Ron's age with unruly black hair and round glasses hiding timid green eyes. The boy's name is Harry, and he never really leaves them from that moment on.

Not that Ginny minds, of course. This definitely means she's won on the soulmate front: she's met hers well before her brothers found theirs.


End file.
